I began to wonder whether I too was a spirit after commenting several times on that thread with reasonable plausible possibilities for the op's problems, only to be completely ignored.perhaps I should get the vicar in to tell me if he "sees dead people"?

Just that a spiteful person is a more likely explanation than, well, a ghost.

Yup.

I think that it is just too unpalatable to consider that somebody you know/love/live with might be caperble of playing with your perception of reality. Assuming ghost is a lot easier. Ghosts are unexplainable and don't require a rhard going e-examination of emotional ties, joint finances and legal unions.

I still feel a right tit for not even having seriously considered that the living, breathing presence in the room finding his way through the glue of a sealed wage packet was ever so slightly more of a realistic explanation though.

I cringe when I think how many people humoured me during my retelling of my "well how do you explain that then?" ghost story, while thinking "it was your dickhead husband sweetie, but I'm too polite to tell you and you wouldn't listen to me even if I did, so I will smile and make "ohhh how spookie" noises in the right places".

The face wasn't at you BTW. It was at the people who pull these kinds of stunts. It may or may not have been focused on one member of the ilk in particular.

Carpe: I agree with you that it's not a nice way to behave (moving stuff around to convince someone that their home is haunted). Just that a spiteful person is a more likely explanation than, well, a ghost.

According to the stuff he's consistently wanted to do to women during his fake possessions

By "spooky" coincidence, the secnd vid I've just watched has him being incredibly sexually aggressive to this blonge woman trying to talk to "the spirit in him" in the dark.

When the minders dragged him off her I was rather hoping they would give him a sneaky knee in the nuts.

I got chills, not from the posession, but from the unintended revelation about his attitude towards females. Becuase while the possession itself just reeked of synthetic, the sexual aggression towards her didn't hit my "it's being put on" nerve at all. Quite the opposite.

If he had been an all rpund good actor I could leave room for it being a production peice, but seems a bit odd that he is hammy and unbelievable when just being possessed, and then goes all Oscar Winner when he tries to sexually intimidate her and grab at her.

I'm a bit about the humans that "have a bit of fun" at other people's expense.

I was convinced that unknown forces were at play when I sealed my wage packet, went to sleep, woke to a wage packet TIGHTLY SEALED that had five quid less in when I opened it. (there was only 25 quid in it so no I did not miscount).

7, yes 7, years later after all that time being littered with references to my "spooky" wage stealing encounter with the spirit world, my (now ex) husband revealed that after I wnet to sleep he went for my wage packet (cos he'd lost on the gee gees and was down to 50p with three days to go tillpay day). I hadn't sealed the packet as well as I'd thought. So he managed to release the flap, extract a fiver and then reseal it properly.

7 fucking years of me swearing black's blue that there was no plausable explanation and I was being targeted by tealeaf ghost who left me short as some kind of cosmic tax.

He was very lucky he didn't join the spirit world himself when he finally confessed, cos while I would drag out the cosmic tax story in a pretty light hearted way when ghostie encounters were shared I lugged around a real sense of disquiet all that time. It was like I couldn't fully trust my surroundings.

7 fucking YEARS.

The git. all cos it was more important for me not to be angry with him about gambling again when we were so skint than it was for me not to feel I could trust the physical world around me.

I left him over twenty years ago, and that one still gets my dander up even now. Oh how he laughed AT me when he finally told me. His glee at revealling my gullability was a bit more chilling than thinking a ghost was nicking off me.

I sometimes wonder what proportion of people finding things being moved/rearraged inexplicably are undergoing some wierd control based form of gaslighting.

I think some people may be getting a kick out of being able to distort their loved one's/relative's relationship with reality at will.

Oh all this 'It happened to ME' guff: it's still not ghosts. If it wasn't natural phenomena (large vehicle going past causing things to move/fall down) then either you moved the stuff yourself and forgot, then a pet or more a human being was having a bit of fun with your gullibility.

James Randi's million quid is still up for grabs, you know. Funny, that...

I think I may have had the rotten luck to click the clip most likely to induce a sense of humour failure.

I spent years involved in MIL's care which included managing bipolar I that didn't respond to treatment all that often.

To hear this fucker witter on that mental hospitals closed because they weren't needed cos "it's documented" (by who? your mum?) that most inmates weren't ill, but were open channels to t'other side.....

I could happily batter him right now.

Verbally of course.

OK you ghost believers. I need a favour. MIL died right before New Year. Could you get in touch with her and ask if she fancies slipping into her most florid psychotic state and haunting this piece of crap as pay back for casually and nonsensically minimising the pain and exhaustion of families left to deal with very ill loved ones curtesey of the "couldn't give a fuck in the community" policy.

If she fancies going a bit poltergeist on him to boot I wouldn't be raising any objections.

I have always thought I am maybe a little gullible, but the fact that even after the OP reeled of her story of the vicar who stayed for tea, it still didn't even cross my mind that it was made up . I even wrote 'I believe you op' . Oh the shame! Still a good healthy debate about all things wooooo and all things not.... Right, off to buy that leg of tuna dh has been asking for

p.s. the doors in my 500 year old house frequently open in front of me, just as I'm about to go through them, usually carrying a heavy tray. It's extremely handy.

An old friend, who's also a vicar, did kindly offer to bless our house when we moved in, but given it's just a house it hardly seemed worth it. I didn't imagine that a blessing would consist of anything more than a prayer, though. If it had been like the failed exorcism described in the deleted thread, it would have been loads more fun. I can just see my very scholarly friend battling with unclean spirits in our bathroom.

Ellie that photo is much more convincing than many 'real' ghosts isn't it? Mrs next door wanted to move house especially as they bought the bungalow following the death of the old lady who was the only person to have lived there since it was built!

Arriving late to this but yes, i think the thread could have been left to run, with just a tip off from MNHQ about it being possibly a wind up.

The argument discussion, which took up 99% of the thread (as the OP only posted twice or 3 times was it?), was very interesting and perfectly within guidelines.

For what it's worth i was very on the fence about woo until a couple of years ago when something happened to me which i have found no sensible explanation for. It involved a sudden piling up of objects in an area where there was only me present .... and i didn't do it. This means either i am bonkers (obviously an option ) or there is such thing as woo. Neither option is a comforting thought as far as i'm concerned, but that's all i have to choose from. ''It happened to me'' is all i can say in the face of scepticism.

Solid: my friend had a ghost in her new house, which was built on the site of a grand old house.Shoes moved around the house and no, it wasn't the baby moving them.A pair of shoes in the hall would be changed to a shoe and a slipper.It wasn't caused by the pipes or subsidence.It was caused by a spirit, probably the 8 year old child who had drowned 100 years previously in the lake.

It is quite amusing how adamant the non believers are that there is nothing after death, therefore there are no ghosts. Full stop.